What You Can Do
McCarty, John T.
Book Review What You Can Do about Inflation, Unemployment, Productivity, Profit and Collective Bargaining by Lemuel R. Boulware Loeffler & Co. $1.35 pb. 1973 has ushered in a crisis of false...
...Was the U.S...
...What follows in WHAT YOU CAN DO rewarding to some and shocking to others is an extensive treatment of how business really operates, who pays the expenses, and who, ultimately, benefits from business' profit...
...This citizen needs help...
...It must come from new or converted "thought-leaders" working directly with their fellows, discussing with them how each individual can more effectively bring about the high-productivity, low-unemployment, pollution and inflation free society we all desire...
...Chapter V is likely to surprise readers both on and off campus...
...Chapter III ("The Moral Requirement") calls our attention to the "organized free loading" which is just as destructive as the also prevalent individual theft...
...The interests and intelligence of individual members of the public, he writes, have always been more important: "even in a dictatorship, the ruler dares not go much beyond what the public majority rightly or wrongly believes at the moment is what should be done...
...The book is not just a problem stater...
...The public majority loosely assumes this money comes from somewhere else, though the individual member would flatly refuse to pay the cost if he knew he was paying the bill...
...Too many of us expect to take more from the system than we contribute...
...Government...
...Take inflation for example...
...Under the present circumstances this help will not come through the usual channels of corrective education...
...What's the only cure...
...What determines how high or low the standard of living will be...
...So, thought-leaders: to arms...
...All previous attempts at a free society have failed because of the incompetence and cupidity of most of the citizens who made up the voting majority and exercised the force of majority opinion...
...It forthrightly answers such currently pertinent questions as these: What's the real cause of inflation...
...Are unions now weaker or stronger than they should be in worker interest...
...All in all, this little book presents a big challenge to "thought-leaders" on and off campus...
...The reader, it is assumed, is or soon will be such a "thought-leader...
...Beg, buy, or borrow the book and share its contents with your family and friends...
...Are pay increases now more or less than the productivity increases from improvements in equipment and methods...
...What is really the matter with collective bargaining...
...Specifically, he lacks three things: an adequate understanding of our economy and the popular "something for nothing" philosophy which threatens its well-being, a moral determination to correct what is going wrong, and the political sophistication that will help him decide how and how not to correct it...
...Action must begin now, he concludes, because there is evidence ours is failing for the same reason...
...citizen's freedom won from King George III for good...
...Or does it have to be won all over again everyday...
...As could be expected from the long-controversial author, Lemuel R. Boulware, the book challenges the current consensus and offers facts and analyses desperately needed by the public at the grass roots, but previously considered too sacrosanct for widespread public examination at that or any other level...
...The above just about sums up the thesis and purpose of a lively new book with what must be the longest self-explanatory title in publishing history: WHAT YOU CAN DO about Inflation...
...It is emphatic that our freedom and well-being have both a moral base and a moral requirement...
...In home-owner and taxpayer interest...
...Chapter IV examines problems ("Inflation, Unemployment, Productivity, and Profit") which have caused the majority heartbreaking disillusionment and require no small amount of corrective study if the majority wants to handle competently its own interests...
...If he does not quickly achieve the competence and alertness which his own interests require for guiding his own acts and those of his representatives, he will be destroyed by the Frankenstein he created...
...Myths about exorbitant profit-margins are finally laid to rest...
...Boulware concludes that the suffering public is itself not only responsible for its own injury to itself, but is also the only agency which can demand and get the reform which the public so needs in labor law and its administration...
...Answer: Neither...
...It explains in detail the wide gap that has developed between good union theory and bad, current union practice...
...Question: Whose fault is this...
...Who is responsible for the good and bad which politicians promise and do in office...
...The chapter on political sophistication at the beginning of the book tells us why the public point of view is so important and how our current crisis, and the political solutions that must remedy it, can be handled by the responsible, voluntary decision-making of each person...
...Who's responsible...
...Our government has been running its worthless money mill for two, politically-imposed reasons: (1) To provide the money for government to pay for those goods and services which the public majority wants or permits some or all of the public to receive at so-called "government expense...
...2) To pump out added worthless cash to increase the number and cut the value of all our dollars, so that consumers will have enough cheapened dollars to buy at the higher prices...
...1973 has ushered in a crisis of false expectations...
...Who profits or loses when productivity rises or falls...
...The whole chapter is a very worthwhile exercise not only in debunking promises of "something for nothing" through unions, business, or government, but also in re-enthroning the economics, morals, and politics of "something for something" as the basis on which to seek genuine well-being...
...Unemployment, Productivity, Profit, and Collective Bargaining...
...It is basically the fault of the individual citizen who makes up that majority which determines the outcome of elections and which, between elections, determines the crucial impact of public opinion on both the expectation and actuality of pay, prices, taxes, savings, legislation, and as the combined result of all these of personal and economic freedom...
...This typical member of the majority just does not now have enough information to live up to the responsibilities his own freedom demands of him...
...It deals at length with the costly abuses the public majority has allowed to grow up: the monopoly of employment opportunity, the compulsory financial support of political activities contrary to member wishes, and the legally and illegally privileged violence to persons and property of members and nonmembers alike...
...Boulware warns us not to credit political institutions with being all-wise and allpowerful...
...Unions or business...
...Who alone can do it...
...In consumer interest...
...Boulware stresses the hard fact that inflation does not come from war, or from business greed, or from government supplying its citizens with services for which they are willing to pay...
...Inflation comes only from government being forced or allowed by the sovereign majority to create extra money (and credit) where there are no extra goods and services to match...
...Who determines what pay increases will be...
...John T. McCarty...
...Do controls in the end result in higher or lower wages, prices, employment, profit, future values, and the availability of bottom-of-the-line models most needed by lower-income citizens...
...We must not only know what we ought to do in the individual and common interest, but for very practical reasons, if for no other we must also do that voluntarily even when no one is looking...
Vol. 6 • May 1973 • No. 8
